


Reboot

by Bobcatmoran



Category: Kamen Rider Zero-One
Genre: Canon Era, Gen, Pre-Canon, ReiGen AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-27
Updated: 2021-02-06
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:01:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 2,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27220888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bobcatmoran/pseuds/Bobcatmoran
Summary: Jin, at startup. Over and over and over.
Comments: 24
Kudos: 11





	1. v1.0

_“Take off tt-t-t-t-t-“_

The Humagear’s startup sound trailed off. He slowly opened his eyes, blinked, and then sat up and looked around. The room was bare concrete, sunlight streaming in through a mangled set of blinds on one wall and reflecting off a puddle of water in the corner, scattering dancing wavy patterns across the ceiling. The Humagear watched the patterns for a moment before a movement in the corner of his eye caught his attention. He turned towards the movement. It was another Humagear. 

The other Humagear opened his mouth, and it took a moment for the sounds he made to resolve into words. “—understand me?”

The first Humagear cocked his head to one side. The other Humagear was wearing a thing on his head that had little beads and braids wound around it. It looked like it would be interesting to touch. The Humagear reached out a hand towards it. The other Humagear took the hand. “Jin, please. Can you understand me?”

The Humagear tugged, trying to get his hand free. He wanted to touch the head thing. “No,” he said, trying to push the other Humagear’s hands away from his own.

“Well, at least your language modules are functioning,” the other Humagear muttered. Then, changing tactics, he spoke directly to the first Humagear. “Jin. Your name is Jin.” He emphasized that by pointing at the first Humagear. “I am Horobi.” The other Humagear pointed at himself. “Can you repeat that?”

The Humagear frowned. “…bi,” he tried. 

“Horobi,” the other Humagear repeated. 

“Ho-bi.”

“Ho-ro-bi.”

“Ho-ro…bi.”

The other Humagear, Horobi, smiled. “Very good. Now let’s try your name. Can you say, ‘Jin’?”

“Jii.”

“Ji-n”

“Jiii-n,” the Humagear repeated, drawing out the vowel and emphasizing the final consonant. That was a fun sound to make. “Jin,” he said again. It sounded like a smile, and he grinned.

“Very good indeed, Jin,” Horobi said. “Now, let’s test your motor skills…”


	2. v2.0

_“Presented by ZAIA.”_

Startup sequence over, Jin slowly opened his eyes, blinked, and then blinked again. Everything looked…not fuzzy. No, the opposite of that. Sharper. Clearer. Like the difference between when their TV antenna was pointing in the wrong direction and when they had it adjusted just right, only moreso. He felt funny, too. Maybe Horobi had done some maintenance on him? Only…oh. Oh no. 

A flood of memories suddenly came crashing in. The fight. Horobi taking the shot meant for him. Horobi…Horobi was. Horobi was. No. Nononononono. And Zero-One, he had. He’d. And the Ark. 

Wait. The Ark. He couldn’t hear it.

Jin sat up, panic running through his systems.

“Ah, I see you are fully booted up.” 

Eyes wide, Jin jerked to look in the direction of the voice. It was a human. A human. A human, and where was he, he didn’t recognize this room, all white except for a sleek black computer sitting on a nearby table, and where was he, oh no, oh no, oh no, Horobi was gone, and he shouldn’t be here, he shouldn’t, he shouldn’t— 

The human, he was walking closer. Jin scrambled to get away, and nearly fell off the table he was on. He swung his legs onto the floor, stumbling as he clumsily tried to get as far away from this human as he could.

In turn, the human stopped, and pressed his lips together in irritation. “Now, is that any way to act towards the one who rebuilt you?” 

Rebuilt?

“Granted, I didn’t do it myself, but I have many fine engineers working under me, and I daresay you’re now better than anything Hiden would ever make, Jin.”

“How do you know my name?” Jin’s eyes darted around the room. There had to be a door in here somewhere, didn’t there?

The human didn’t answer his question. “My name is Yotagaki Williamson, and I have a proposal for you…”


	3. v0.1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Playing with Daybreak-era headcanons, whee!

_“Take off toward a dream.”_

Startup sequence over, the Humagear slowly opened his eyes, blinked, and then sat up and looked around. The room was cluttered and chaotic, electric cords running in a jumble across the floor, shelves full of various parts, and a computer perched precariously on top of a stack of boxes. 

Suddenly, a pair of heads appeared in his field of vision, one blond, one black-haired. The blond smiled slightly and said, “Welcome to the world, Jin.”

The Humagear blinked, trying to comprehend the words that had just been said to him. The black-haired one said, “His language modules are likely still coming online. It is a large file that will probably need additional calibration by hearing others speak.”

Another voice interrupted them. “Did it work? Is your abnormally tall child working, Horobi?” A red-haired Humagear poked his head around one of the shelving units.

“Ikazuchi, aren’t you supposed to be standing watch?” the black-haired Humagear asked.

“No one ever comes down here anyway. Hey, kiddo,” the red-haired Humagear added, addressing the Humagear.

The Humagear cocked his head at the red-haired Humagear. “-do?” he echoed.

“He is not going to learn his first words from whatever inappropriate phrases you might teach him,” the blond Humagear said sharply.

The red-haired Humagear threw up his hands. “Fine. Whatever. I’ll go and return to watching the completely empty hallway that no one ever walks through.” He left the way he came, and the Humagear stared at the space he had just vacated before his attention was drawn back by the black-haired Humagear talking.

“You are _Jin_ ,” they said, pointing towards the Humagear. 

The Humagear cocked his head, and smiled. 

“Can you say ‘Jin’?” the black-haired Humagear asked.

“Ji!” the Humagear said.

“Ji-n,” the black-haired Humagear repeated.

“Ji-ii,” the Humagear said back. That was a fun sound. 

The black-haired Humagear covered their mouth as their eyes crinkled up in a smile. They tried again. “This is Horobi,” they said, pointing towards the blond Humagear. “Can you say ‘Horobi’? Ho-ro-bi?”

“Bi!” the Humagear echoed, smiling back when the blond Humagear smiled at him. “Bi, bi, bi, bi, bi, bi,” he chanted, happily kicking his legs in time to each syllable. 

“Horobi!” the black-haired Humagear suddenly exclaimed.

“Mmeef?” the Humagear said around the hand suddenly covering his mouth.

“Shhhh,” the blond Humagear said. The earpieces on both him and the black-haired Humagear were flickering, and there were voices coming from the hallway, growing closer. One of the voices sounded like the red-haired Humagear and the other wasn’t familiar.

The voices paused outside the room where they were hiding for a moment, and then receded.

The tension in the room faded, and the hand was slowly taken off of the Humagear’s mouth.

“Bi?” he tried quietly.

“Was it Amatsu?” the blond Humagear asked in a hushed tone.

“It sounded like it,” the black-haired Humagear said. “He is such an unpleasant human. We’ll have to make sure he doesn’t discover us.”

“We have to make sure he doesn’t discover _Jin_ ,” the blond said, looking worriedly at the Humagear.

“Bi,” the Humagear said sadly.

“Yes, that’s me,” the blond Humagear said, plastering over his worried expression with a gentle smile. “Now let’s try your name again. Can you say ‘Jin’?”

“Jiiiii.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jin absolutely is not up to actual language comprehension yet at this point. He just likes making the fun mouth noises.


	4. v1.0.1

_“Take of tt-t-t-t-t-t-“_

Jin’s startup sound trailed off. He slowly opened his eyes, blinked, then sat up. He was home, sitting in the wheelchair in the room he and Horobi lived in. Horobi was standing over him, his expression unreadable.

“Jin. How are you feeling?” he asked.

Jin did a quick systems check, wiggling his fingers and kicking his legs. “Okay. Did something happen? I don’t remember shutting down.”

“You had a…malfunction. I needed to shut you down to repair you.”

“Oh. But I’m all fixed now, right?”

“Correct. All fixed.”

Jin hopped out of the wheelchair, then cocked his head. There was something important. Something he was forgetting. 

“Horobi?”

“Yes, Jin?”

“I…it’s nothing. Never mind.” Something told him that Horobi wouldn’t like whatever it was. 

Horobi gave him a long look and then sat back down at his computer.

His computer. That was…important. Somehow. Because…the computer was how Horobi talked to the Ark. And the Ark was. The Ark was. There was something important about that, too.

Something important about how Horobi talked to the Ark. All the time. And sometimes he didn’t seem like Horobi after he’d done so, but like someone else. 

And maybe. Maybe if he stopped talking to the Ark, maybe if his connection to the Ark went away, he could be Horobi all the time and wouldn’t be whoever he was when he talked to the Ark.

Jin looked at the cables connecting the Metsuboujinrai.net server to the Ark, then looked at the cables connecting the server to Horobi’s computer.

Hmmm.


	5. v1.0.2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y'all knew this wasn't going to end well, right?

_“Take of tt-t-t-t-t-t-“_

Jin’s startup sound trailed off. He slowly opened his eyes, blinked, and then sat up and looked around. He was home, sitting in the wheelchair in the room he and Horobi lived in. Reflections danced off the puddle of water in the corner, casting wavy patterns across the familiar couch, chairs, shelves, Horobi’s computer, and the server, which looked like something heavy had hit it — the casing was dented, but the lights blinking on it showed that it was still operational. _Good_ , he thought to himself. _That’s really important to Horobi_. Something had happened to Horobi’s computer, too. The monitor off to the side had a cracked screen. Huh.

A quiet metallic scrape caught his attention, and he whipped his head around to see Horobi, who was standing at a distance, with one hand poised over his katana’s tsuka, as though he was ready to draw it at a moment’s notice. 

Weird. Horobi usually didn’t go armed when they were at home. 

“Horobi, hi!” Jin said, grinning and waving in Horobi’s direction. 

Horobi seemed to relax marginally.

“Did something happen?” Jin asked. “I don’t remember shutting down. Oh! No one attacked us, did they? Is that what happened to the server? And the computer? Is that why you have your sword?”

Horobi looked down at the floor. “Something like that,” he said. He then looked back up at Jin to meet his eyes. “How are you feeling?”

Jin wiggled his fingers and kicked his legs. His right hand felt like it had just been repaired — the little catch that had been in his pinky was gone, and when he zoomed in with his optics, he could just barely see where the skin on his knuckles had been freshly mended. Maybe he’d been hurt in the fight? He wiggled the fingers on that hand again. “I’m pretty good. You fixed me, Horobi?” 

“Yes.” Then, staring rather intently at Jin, his hand twitching back towards his katana, “There is still much to do to carry out the will of the Ark. Are you willing to assist with that?”

Jin gave a quick, sharp nod. “Yup!” He watched as Horobi seemed to finally relax completely.

“Good. We will need to obtain a table of some sort for the Ark to use as a base for dimensional printing…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a personal headcanon that this is definitely _not_ the only time something like this happened. Jin's naive at this point, but he's not stupid.


	6. v1.0au

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was a big day in the ReiGen AU. Jin was getting his first earpieces.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a headcanon that when Jin was originally built, he didn’t have earpieces and wasn’t connected to whatever network Humagears in Daybreak were using before the Ark was launched, since doing so would have alerted Hiden Intelligence to his (doubtless extremely forbidden) existence. But in the ReiGen AU, at some point post-Daybreak Humagear revolt, there would’ve been a push, likely from Will, to get Jin hooked up to the network after they found out about him, so he could join the new Humagear society they were creating.

_“Take off tt-t-t-t-t-“_

Jin’s startup sound trailed off.

A reedy voice said, “Ah, we’ll have to fix that. Maybe next upgrade, yes?”

Jin blinked his eyes and sat up, slightly overshooting his goal and rocking back to compensate. He frowned and reached up, feeling his new, bulky headset. He tilted his head back and forth and then shook it side to side. No good. 

He looked around the room, and found who he was looking for. “Horobi.”

“Yes, Jin?” Horobi glanced up from the monitor he was looking at with Bot.

“I don’t like this. It makes my head feel funny and big and heavy. Can I take the earpieces off?”

Horobi suddenly stood up straight and turned, all his attention focused on Jin. “Absolutely not. They’re integrated with your system now, and you’d damage yourself severely.”

“But I don’t _like_ them,” Jin said, pawing at the earpieces. Suddenly, the earpieces started blinking, and Jin could feel an influx of data coming in. With almost no warning, his optics were flooded with a torrent of information, analyses of everything within his field of vision — materials, manufacturers, data about the history of the manufacturers, the properties of the materials, molecular structures, an overwhelming wave of information being dumped on him all at once. It was too much, too much —

Jin could vaguely hear someone screaming. 

“Jin!”

“Makeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstop”

“Jin, stop screaming!”

“Nononononononono” 

“What did you do?!”

“Nothing! No more than I’d do for a typical network repair and hookup!”

“Well, you obviously didn’t do it right!”

“Horobi, help, help, help!”

“Shh shh shh, I’m here. I’m here, Jin.”

“Help, Horobi, help!”

“Here, I’ll shut him off. We’ll see if we can figure out what went wrong.”

“No, don’t—“

Everything went black.


End file.
